Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899-January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor.
His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon.
In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema.
Bogart began acting in Broadway shows, beginning his career in motion pictures with Up the River (1930) for Fox and appeared in supporting roles for the next decade, sometimes portraying gangsters. He was praised for his work as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936) but remained secondary to other actors Warner Bros. cast in lead roles.
His breakthrough from supporting roles to stardom came with High Sierra (1941) and The Maltese Falcon (1941), considered one of the first great noir films.
Bogart's private detectives, Sam Spade (in The Maltese Falcon) and Phillip Marlowe (in 1946's The Big Sleep), became the models for detectives in other noir films. His most significant romantic lead role was with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942), which earned him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Forty-four-year-old Bogart and 19-year-old Lauren Bacall fell in love when they filmed To Have and Have Not (1944).
In 1945, a few months after principal photography for The Big Sleep, their second film together, he divorced his third wife and married Bacall. After their marriage, they played each other's love interest in the mystery thrillers Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948).
Bogart's performances in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and In a Lonely Place (1950) are now considered among his best, although they were not recognized as such when the films were released.
He reprised those unsettled, unstable characters as a World War II naval-vessel commander in The Caine Mutiny (1954), which was a critical and commercial hit and earned him another Best Actor nomination. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of a cantankerous river steam launch skipper opposite Katharine Hepburn's missionary in the World War I African adventure The African Queen (1951).
Other significant roles in his later years included The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Ava Gardner and his on-screen competition with William Holden for Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954). A heavy smoker and drinker, Bogart died from esophageal cancer in January 1957.
More information: Hometowns to Hollywood
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born on Christmas Day 1899 in New York City, the eldest child of Belmont DeForest Bogart (1867–1934) and Maud Humphrey (1868–1940). Belmont was the only child of the unhappy marriage of Adam Welty Bogart (a Canandaigua, New York, innkeeper) and Julia Augusta Stiles, a wealthy heiress.
The name Bogart derives from the Dutch surname, Bogaert. Belmont and Maud married in June 1898. He was a Presbyterian, of English and Dutch descent, and a descendant of Sarah Rapelje, the first European child born in New Netherland. Maud was an Episcopalian of English heritage, and a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Humphrey was raised Episcopalian, but was non-practicing for most of his adult life.
With no viable career options, Bogart enlisted in the United States Navy in the spring of 1918, during World War I, and served as a coxswain. He recalled later, At eighteen, war was great stuff. Paris! Sexy French girls! Hot damn!
Bogart was recorded as a model sailor, who spent most of his sea time after the armistice ferrying troops back from Europe.
Bogart left the service on June 18, 1919 at the rank of Boatswain's Mate Third Class. During the Second World War, Bogart attempted to reenlist in the Navy but was rejected due to his age. He then volunteered for the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve in 1944, patrolling the California coastline in his yacht, the Santana.
Bogart resumed his friendship with Bill Brady Jr. (whose father had show-business connections), and obtained an office job with William A. Brady's new World Films company.
Although he wanted to try his hand at screenwriting, directing, and production, he excelled at none. Bogart was stage manager for Brady's daughter Alice's play A Ruined Lady. He made his stage debut a few months later as a Japanese butler in Alice's 1921 play Drifting (nervously delivering one line of dialogue), and appeared in several of her subsequent plays.
Bogart
signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation for $750 a week. There
he met Spencer Tracy, a Broadway actor whom Bogart liked and admired,
and they became close friends and drinking companions.
In 1930, Tracy first called him Bogie. Tracy made his feature film debut in his only movie with Bogart, John Ford's early sound film Up the River (1930), in which they had the two leading roles as inmates. Tracy received top billing, but Bogart's picture appeared on the film's posters. He was billed fourth behind Tracy, Claire Luce and Warren Hymer but his role was almost as large as Tracy's and much larger than Luce's or Hymer's. Despite being close friends, Tracy and Bogart made only one movie together, Up the River. A quarter of a century later, the two men planned to make The Desperate Hours together. Both insisted upon top billing, however; Tracy dropped out, and was replaced by Fredric March.
Bogart then had a supporting role in Bad Sister (1931) with Bette Davis.
Bogart shuttled back and forth between Hollywood and the New York stage from 1930 to 1935, out of work for long periods. His parents had separated; his father died in 1934 in debt, which Bogart eventually paid off. He inherited his father's gold ring, which he wore in many of his films. At his father's deathbed, Bogart finally told him how much he loved him.
Bogart's second marriage was rocky; dissatisfied with his acting career, depressed and irritable, he drank heavily.
On August 21, 1938, Bogart entered a turbulent third marriage to actress Mayo Methot, a lively, friendly woman when sober but paranoid and aggressive when drunk. She became convinced that Bogart was unfaithful to her (which he eventually was, with Lauren Bacall, while filming To Have and Have Not in 1944).
High Sierra (1941, directed by Raoul Walsh) featured a screenplay written by John Huston, Bogart's friend and drinking partner, albeit adapted from a novel by W. R. Burnett, author of the novel on which Little Caesar was based.
Now regarded as a classic film noir, The Maltese Falcon (1941) was John Huston's directorial debut. Based on the Dashiell Hammett novel, it was first serialized in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1929 and was the basis of two earlier film versions; the second was Satan Met a Lady (1936), starring Bette Davis.
Producer Hal B. Wallis initially offered to cast George Raft as the leading man, but Raft, far more established than Bogart, had a contract stipulating he was not required to appear in remakes. Fearing that it would be nothing more than a sanitized version of the pre-Production Code The Maltese Falcon (1931), Raft turned down the role to make Manpower with director Raoul Walsh, with whom he had worked on The Bowery in 1933. Huston then eagerly accepted Bogart as his Sam Spade.
Bogart played his first romantic lead in Casablanca (1942): Rick Blaine, an expatriate nightclub owner hiding from a suspicious past and negotiating a fine line among Nazis, the French underground, the Vichy prefect and unresolved feelings for his ex-girlfriend. Bosley Crowther wrote in his November 1942 New York Times review that Bogart's character was used to inject a cold point of tough resistance to evil forces afoot in Europe today. The film, directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Hal Wallis, featured Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson.
Howard Hawks introduced Bogart and Lauren Bacall (1924-2014) while Bogart was filming Passage to Marseille (1944). The three subsequently collaborated on To Have and Have Not (1944), a loose adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel, and Bacall's film debut.
Months after wrapping To Have and Have Not, Bogart and Bacall were reunited for an encore: the film noir The Big Sleep (1946), based on the novel by Raymond Chandler with script help from William Faulkner.
The suspenseful Dark Passage (1947) was Bogart and Bacall's next collaboration.
Riding high in 1947 with a new contract which provided limited script refusal and the right to form his production company, Bogart rejoined with John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: a stark tale of greed among three gold prospectors in Mexico.
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Bogart, a liberal Democrat, organized the Committee for the First Amendment (a delegation to Washington, D.C.) opposing what he saw as the House Un-American Activities Committee's harassment of Hollywood screenwriters and actors. He later wrote an article, I'm No Communist, for the March 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine distancing himself from the Hollywood Ten to counter negative publicity resulting from his appearance and save his career. Bogart wrote, The ten men cited for contempt by the House Un-American Activities Committee were not defended by us.
Bogart created his film company, Santana Productions (named after his yacht and the cabin cruiser in Key Largo), in 1948.
Outside Santana Productions, Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn in the John Huston-directed The African Queen in 1951.
Bogart dropped his asking price to obtain the role of Captain Queeg in Edward Dmytryk's drama, The Caine Mutiny (1954).
For Sabrina (1954), Billy Wilder wanted Cary Grant for the older male lead and chose Bogart to play the conservative brother who competes with his younger, playboy sibling (William Holden) for the affection of the Cinderella-like Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn).
Bogart was a founding member and the original leader of the Hollywood Rat Pack. In the spring of 1955, after a long party in Las Vegas attended by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, her husband Sidney Luft, Michael Romanoff and his wife Gloria, David Niven, Angie Dickinson and others, Bacall surveyed the wreckage and said: You look like a goddamn rat pack.
Bogart had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer when shooting The Harder They Fall, a boxing drama with Rod Steiger in a supporting role. Steiger later mentioned Bogart's courage and geniality during his final performance.
Bogart died in January 1957.
More information: Toronto Public Library
Humphrey Bogart
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